I made it into a little math activity by having them double the recipe the first day and then I THINK we tripled the recipe the second day.

I would highly recommend doing this with your students if you live in a place with tons of snow.

My 4th graders LOVED it.

Confession: I got this idea when one of my friends posted the above link on Facebook announcing that it was the worst thing you could do because of all the chemicals in the air. She said it was worse than drinking rain water. Well, the day after I read that I was outside for recess duty and saw a bunch of my kids eating the snow (it wasn't dirty snow) and I decided that it would be fine. Besides, we are out in the country and not getting the snow off a main highway or anything.

What else did we do?

- I made sugar cookies and we spent some time decorating them.

- We drew names for secret santa (everyone remembered to bring in their gifts and we didn't need to use my emergency extras - I had 3 extras just in case) and obviously opened presents the morning of the last day.

- My teaching partner and myself also opened our gifts. I got a lot of chocolate (and lots from Germany), baking, ornaments, honey (this isn't as surprising as you think it would be), and Tim Horten gift cards. But the most surprising present? A webkin (that was from one of my grade 8's).

- We went sledding

- In the afternoon they also had their party where they ate a ton and watched a movie (I was with my grade 8's in the afternoon though)

Saturday, January 25, 2014

- I went on my very first field trip with my students! It was freezing but I know the kids had a great time so I had a great time too. Plus we were only missing 2 students from the trip!

- Started story #2 in our short story writing unit

- Started speaking French in French class. What a concept! In our defense this is the first year these students have taken French.

- Officially started our multiplication unit! AND... the day we started one of my students told me that the morning had just flown by. My response? "Time flies when you are having fun multiplying!"

- We had our first ever too cold for school day. Students stayed home, teachers went in.

- I discovered I have grade 8 assessments to do by the end of February. Eeep.

- Drove home (twice) in some white out conditions! Seriously, it was not good. But I'm alive and well so all is okay.

Sorry no photos from this week!

Next week I have PD Monday, Tuesday, AND Friday. It'll be one VERY short week. I'm a little nervous I didn't plan enough for my subs.. but the plans are 3 pages/day (be honest with me... is this too much?)

Saturday, January 18, 2014

A thousand apologies... I just really needed some ME time and then I got sick over the break and blah blah blah excuse, excuse, excuse.

The important thing is: I'm back!

What have we been up to since coming back from Christmas break?

- In Science we have started our unit on light and I am SO into it! The kids are too! We do lots of investigations and playing with flashlights and turning out our classroom lights. It's been a lot of fun.

- In math we are finishing up subtracting. I'm still not super into math. HOPEFULLY, we will get through multiplication and division with a minimal amount of heart attacks in the next month and get to move onto something a little more fun and creative and hands on.

- We also started doing "daily math". I had started them on it in September probably but they were having a really hard time with it. I found something a little easier (it even involves some multiplication and division) and we are doing okay with it.

- In art we did some work with pop art and snowflakes (I forgot to take a picture... watch for it next week).

- In health we did some cooperative games (watch for a blog post on the 3 things we tried)

- In grade 8 ELA we started a short story/comic unit! Some of them are super into it. I'm even throwing in some fairytales! (watch for some lessons on these as well)

- Some of those grade 8 students are really getting into the blogs!

- We are working on our editing skills. Pulling out dictionaries and thesaureses and devoting actual time to editing. I hope they are getting it.

- In French we are starting to speak French in French class. What a concept! I'm teaching them basic phrases and words and am making them ask to go to the bathroom in French. It's a start.

AND... here are some photos from the last couple of months (again, a thousand apologies)

I planned a Christmas party for my grades 8. Basically I had them play that game where you take turns trying to unwrap a present with oven mitts on. There were boxes within boxes and about a bazillion layers of newspaper and tape. The present? A pencil. Then we started watching "How the Grinch Stole Christmas", ate food, and went sledding.

We did some 3-D fish art forever ago

It's hard to tell but these are ornaments on a Christmas tree - we used pastels for the tree branches and water colour for the ornaments)

Water colour and tissue paper/stained glass trees. I loved how these turned out! And I love how creative they got with them!

Work in progress. It's hard to tell but it is the French alphabet which is exactly like the English alphabet except the letters sound different. They were supposed to write the letter sounds on the page if they were different from the English sound.

2nd snow day = a day to do some art! What do you think?

Art projects coming up:- a piece on movement- a "we are dreaming of warmer weather" piece- something to do with valentine's day!